Hooked back up and considering the purpose of things

There was an interesting article by David Malouf on the similarities between industrial and interaction design. I’m still struggling with that one. I wish I had the time right now to sit down and work it through as there are many half-baked ideas bumping around my head.

Industrial design is something I know relatively little about, but from what I have gleaned so far, it is a craft that involves the execution of an idea, the creation of an artifact, or the expression of a concept…essentially, the creative shaping of objects in peoples lives towards a particular effect.  The goal is the effect.

Interaction design in contrast…well, how can I describe it?  The goal of interaction design is the creation of processes within the lives of our users. In my conception of interaction design, creativity or any kind of emotional design is simply a means to an end. Interaction design is the creation of a product. The goal is the product – the business  – and the work of an interaction designer is to support the product and the business.

…and here is were this post ends, because it’s 1am and I have work tomorrow. You know, I never thought I’d say it, but I do kind of miss grad school, where it was my job to think about these kind of things…

It’s been a while…

It’s been a while since I updated this blog. A lot has been happening, including a slow shift in my professional work from ‘agile usability specialist’ to ‘agile user-experience analyst.’ And don’t ask me just yet,  because I’m still not entirely sure what the title means myself.

My work in the past year has run the gamut from user research and requirements gathering, to user testing and evaluation, to interaction design, to product ownership and product development. In general, I tend to favour the latter tasks, although most of my skills and training are in the former.

I have been doing a lot more design. Real design, and not the usability-based interface creation I was taught in my HCI classes. It has been a bit of a stretch for an analytical thinker like me to squeeze my head into a creative and intuitive design space. Nevertheless, I find the insight, freedom, and plain old fun that can be had while designing to be simply wonderful.

My positive experiences with design so far, including recent participation in several design workshops at the Agile 2008 conference (e.g. an insightful Design Studio from the folks at Adaptive Path), have definitely enriched my life, and I’m interested and excited to learn more.

In light of this I decided to revive my dusty blog and spend some time over the next couple of months doing exactly what I have been considering for a while now – exploring user experience, exploring design, and finding a space where I want to fit myself into for the next little while.